Agenda item

Report of the Assistant Chief Executive.

The Committee considered a report of the Assistant Chief Executive which presented progress against the council’s corporate basket of performance indicators (PIs) for the Altogether Better Council theme and reported upon other significant performance issues for the 2014/15 financial year (for a copy of report and slides of presentation see file of minutes).

The Corporate Scrutiny and Performance Manager, Tom Gorman was in attendance to speak to Members in relation to the Quarter 4, 2015/16 Performance Management Report.

The presentation looked at the Key Performance Highlights, Key Performance Challenges, Benefits, Customers Seen at Customer Access Points, Telephone Calls Answered, Customer Contacts, Undisputed Invoices Paid within 30 Days, Actions Undertaken to Improve Performance, Freedom of Information, Environmental Information Regulations Requests, Sickness Absence and Performance Appraisals.

Following the presentation the Chairman thanked the Corporate Scrutiny and Performance Manager for his presentation and indicated that he was concerned at the number of children in poverty and the Freedom of Information targets.

Councillor J Armstrong referred to sickness absence which was disappointing as things had been put into place, but sadly it was not making a difference.

Councillor A Shield shared Councillor Armstrong’s concerns and referred to some of the suggestions that scrutiny had made following the light touch review which had not been followed through.

Councillor Wilkes also referred to sickness absence and indicated that if recommendations were implemented changes would be seen. He also referred to page 25 of the agenda in relation to performance indicator REDP179 and that there was no triage data for this indicator. He also commented on Discretionary Housing Payments which were increasing and what was the reason for this increase and that it needed to be looked into.

Ian Ferguson, Revenue and Benefits Manager responded that the Discretionary Housing Payments were monitored and controlled.

Councillor Wilkes responded that controlled would suggest that there was not enough money. The Revenue and Benefits Manager responded that it was controlled by a policy and payments were made within the policy.

Councillor Henig referred to performance indicators 184 and 185 in that telephone contacts had increased and web contacts had reduced which was in the opposite direction to expected trends. She also referred to performance appraisals and how maternity leave was not an excuse for an appraisal not to take place.

Mary Readman, Customer Relations, Policy and Performance responded that work was been undertaken by an anti-poverty group and this information may be useful to be fed into Quarter 1.

In relation to telephone contacts the Registration Service was added to the Automatic Call Distribution during this quarter and a large number of calls were received in relation to the garden waste collection service. She also indicated that 3 years ago they had received £1m calls and that figure was now 650,000 per year. Abandoned calls figures had reduced and operators had received training on how to respond. The Council weren’t quite there with regard to self-service, they were trying to get more services on self-service and the registration service and bulky waste were now on line and more services would be added.

The Corporate Scrutiny and Performance Manager referred to maternity leave and that they tried to ensure that a performance appraisal was completed before they commenced leave but this was not always possible if they had to start their leave earlier than anticipated.

Councillor A Shield commented that it was encouraging about the action group and referred to tenants not being able to move into smaller properties if they had rent arrears. Members discussed this issue in particular if the policy could be looked at to enable tenants to move into smaller properties who were subject to the bedroom tax and this was the reason for the arrears.

Councillor L Armstrong referred to child poverty and asked if these figures could be broken down into wards. The Head of Planning and Performance responded that they would see if this could be done.

Councillor Wilkes referred to target RES/001 Savings delivered against the Medium Term Financial Plan and the figures published at the Cabinet meeting in July and the figures were not the same. It appeared that more savings had been made than anticipated.Officers advised members that the July 2015 Cabinet report represented the latest update.

Resolved:

That the contents of the report be noted.